by DannyBloem 113 Replies latest watchtower scandals
Deputy Dawg asks of Funky (after mentioning a pedo's lack of conscience)
"TELL ME WHY IT IS WRONG TO HARM ANOTHER HUMAN BEING?"
I am still coughing up my coffee. Is this chracter a clone of Jehoobie?
WHY is it WRONG to HARM another human being???" a child, a little old person, a mother of a family. !!!!!!!
What is writing this?
HB ( Horrified Bystander)
Sorry just read Deputy's 911 th post (numerically interesting eh?)
He "does not get [his] morality from a Book but from GOD."
He is therefore Deputy God.
HB
Skeptic
That's moving away from the point, you were incorrectly equating respect for authority with an understanding of the concepts of right and wrong, not stating it merely as a 'moral virtue'
I'm not interested in 'moral development'. I'm interested in moral origin.
I will quote myself
I don't care how you think you learned morality, I want to know where do the concepts of right/wrong, good/evil come from (in an atheist universe) if not from God?
Haven't we been through this before?
You're being disingenuous now. They are the same thing.
Now that you can read my mind, I guess there is little else to say. I don't see them as the same thing.
Do you believe it is impossible for humans to learn concepts as they mature? If not, how are you so sure that humans do not learn moral concepts as they mature?
The concepts of right/wrong, good/evil are quite simple, how we apply them is where it gets complicated. Humans learn how to apply these simple concepts to difficult situations as they mature.
In an atheist universe who are you to tell anyone what's right and what's wrong.
DD - May I ask, by what mechanism does your god implant the concepts of right and wrong into a human?
When I learn how to create life out of nothing, maybe I'll be able to answer that!
Did the concepts of right and wrong exist before man? (That is in an atheist universe.)
"TELL ME WHY IT IS WRONG TO HARM ANOTHER HUMAN BEING?"I am still coughing up my coffee...
So, even HB believes in moral absolutes
Deputy God -
I am coughing that you as a human being seem unable to work out why harming another human being might be wrong unless you were told.
As an avid bible studier, I know that it does not endorse moral absolutes (but I assume God has already made that clear without its assistance).
I was just amazed that you seem to lack any instinct of impulsive compassion, unless of course like the WT you were told to to save your own ass.
HB
instinct of impulsive compassion
Hmmm
instinct of impulsive compassionHmmm
DD,
THere's no need for a supernatural entity bestowing "morality" upon people. Imagine how poorly off our species would be (if not outright driven to extinction) if all of us were sociopaths (that is primarily without conscience). Right there you can see how the converse would have more success. Its plausible that many of the universal sentiments on whats acceptable and repugnant were preferentially selected for because they enhanced the success of those group of individuals expressing them.
I thought some of you might enjoy Bertrand Russell's reasoning on this. He takes it from another angle, but he does assume that the writers of the bible were keeping the rules of logic in mind when penning that masterpiece...
The Moral Arguments for Deity
Now we reach one stage further in what I shall call the intellectual descent that the Theists have made in their argumentations, and we come to what are called the moral arguments for the existence of God. You all know, of course, that there used to be in the old days three intellectual arguments for the existence of God, all of which were disposed of by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason; but no sooner had he disposed of those arguments than he invented a new one, a moral argument, and that quite convinced him. He was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed implicitly in the maxims that he had imbibed at his mother's knee. That illustrates what the psychoanalysts so much emphasize -- the immensely stronger hold upon us that our very early associations have than those of later times.
Kant, as I say, invented a new moral argument for the existence of God, and that in varying forms was extremely popular during the nineteenth century. It has all sorts of forms. One form is to say there would be no right or wrong unless God existed. I am not for the moment concerned with whether there is a difference between right and wrong, or whether there is not: that is another question. The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are in this situation: Is that difference due to God's fiat or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God. You could, of course, if you liked, say that there was a superior deity who gave orders to the God that made this world, or could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up -- a line which I often thought was a very plausible one -- that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.
edited to add the link to the whole essay "Why I am Not a Christian"
p.s. Christians tend to chose faith over logic when given the choice, as it usually gives them a warmer feeling inside (similar to the warming sensation of good scotch....mmmmm....scotch....)
Thanks for posting that one ringo.
DD: The concepts of right/wrong... are quite simple...
Can you define them?
